Shroud of the Avatar - Update #21, Their Art, Your Art and Emotes

With 3 more days to go, this update for the Shroud of the avatar Kickstarter brings us a piece of artwork.
If you want to leave your mark in the game you can also provide them with your art.

With Shroud of the Avatar, our team is breaking new ground in crowdsourcing art through the Unity Asset store AND the crowd sharing of assets to help build a powerful community! During the prototyping phases of SotA we found the Unity asset store immensely valuable. After seeing how the use of informal crowd sourced art and code from the Unity store enhanced our team’s velocity during prototyping, we decided it was time to take the next step and formalize the process.
We want our players to have a hand in creating content for the game. Our plan is to put out calls for art on a bi-weekly basis and then take submissions over the two weeks following the call for art. To help artists better understand how to create their pieces for SotA, a full art style guide will be published on our website, a SotA asset starter pack will be added to the Unity store before the first calls for art, and a detailed description or concept art for the piece we’re in need of will also be included for each new call.
If any submission is selected for use in Shroud of the Avatar, we will not only pay the artist four times the Unity store price for it, but you will also be rewarded in-game with appropriate trophies, or in some cases, a statue version of your art for display.We will also announce the winning art on our website and include it in our art blog with full credits to the maker and include them in the credits of the final game. And you continue to own the rights to your work, allowing for you to sell your piece in the Unity store, where it will include a “Shroud of the Avatar Approved” art banner.
For quality pieces that are not accepted, we will provide constructive feedback from our veteran art staff to help with future submissions.
Our next goal is targeted at our Developer Level Backers ($400) or higher, and is the addition of monthly Unity asset packs that include a variety of SotA in-game art assets! While the SotA Unity art packs won’t include 100% of our assets, it will include the majority of our non-quest related elements as well as some code systems. This will only include assets created within Portalarium, and not user submitted assets.
The assets will be useable and royalty free in any project the backer is directly involved in and will only carry the requirement that Portalarium is listed in the credits! Our goal is to get professional game assets in the hands of our most ravenous fans and indie game developers.
For indie game developers or small game teams, this gives them access to a stream of top quality fantasy content for their own creations. For the super fans out there, they can use the assets with the free or paid versions of Unity to make their own fan applications! Fans who are developers can also submit their own scenes created with the assets for use in the final game! Look for more details on the scene submission process and rewards after our Kickstarter ends!

I kept waiting for the next kickstarter update that would spend more time on the core gameplay mechanics.

There's been some discussion on this, but there's been much more discussion about peripheral aspects of the game such as pets & houses. And a lot of nostalgia talk including interviews with past employees and reflecting back on past game development and the "black book."

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind discussions about all that but as this kickstarter winds down I'm surprised that there really hasn't been at least as much discussion about the core gameplay as there has been about all the other stuff.

Come on guys, in your next update, let's get some insight into more of the core gameplay. Preferably, at least for me, the solo player gameplay.

— If I'm right but there is no wife around to acknowledge it, am I still right?

I agree with MadGamer, the more I hear the less I am interested. For me they are communicating the wrong things. I'm considering cancelling my pledge and increasing my pledge for Bloom. That might not make it, but I find it far more interesting than SotA.

— Computern. A machine which flawlessly performs the instructions it is given, no matter how flawed those instructions may be.

The difficulty is that the developers are relying on video and chat streams to communicate more details about this project and answer questions. In doing so they are only targeting a minority of hardcore fans that have the patience and time to go through and follow this massive amounts streamed data.

Related to the above, the developers mainly communicate with hardcore fans which means that they take for granted that other people might not be familiar with fundamental aspects of the game such as the story and single player offline modes.

Originally Posted by rune_74
The info you guys want is there they just don't put it as updates, which I think they miss because of that. However, there is a ton of info out if you look.

It might be. In general however I don't read walls of text nor do I watch lengthy videos on the Internet for the simple reason that I feel I lack the time for that? Still I've checked out quite a bit on this one. I am only interested in the offline single player game and I just hope the game that does tribute to the Ultima games is there. I do hope the game becomes a success however I am sceptic. I have read information from RG in the past on his ideas what games should become and felt I was not in his target group. He hasn't convinced me yet that I am now.
He might pick up more money than DOS but that is a game that I really want to play, for SotA I'm not that sure.

— Computern. A machine which flawlessly performs the instructions it is given, no matter how flawed those instructions may be.